I feel CS is basically a ego trip, people do share helpful hints but it's a ladder where people try to out-do each other, eg. the formula for portraiture (70-200, f2.8, medium format, good bokeh, sharpness) remains the same, there is no further exploration in portraiture, only a handful might try eg. wide-angle portraiture, intriguing nude-abstracts or a funky destructive film-negative post-process... Sometimes, even imitation of style is unconciously done, maybe because mathematically, the odds of producing similar photographs with 10 CSers & 1 model are quite high or advice is taken immediately at face-value. If there was no photography internet forums to share photos, would your photos improve, stay the same or truly be ground-breaking?
Also, now that photography is in a digital age (I know it's inevitable but...), dslrs are more of a 'point&shoot&upload' process (compared to the darkroom...) which sorta aggravates the ladder-imitation-effect... we all know those types of camera hobbyists (cant even call them photographers) who only look at histogram (overexposed or underexposed) and solely believe in the specs of 'superior' equipment that their ignorance only produces sh*tty photos
Maybe this topic has been long discussed before, if it has, pls let me know to delete this thread =)
Also, now that photography is in a digital age (I know it's inevitable but...), dslrs are more of a 'point&shoot&upload' process (compared to the darkroom...) which sorta aggravates the ladder-imitation-effect... we all know those types of camera hobbyists (cant even call them photographers) who only look at histogram (overexposed or underexposed) and solely believe in the specs of 'superior' equipment that their ignorance only produces sh*tty photos
Maybe this topic has been long discussed before, if it has, pls let me know to delete this thread =)